The palace reception hall had been arranged for the delegation's formal arrival with the specific, comprehensive attention that the palace's ceremonial staff brought to occasions that had been anticipated for months — the full formal configuration, the correct national symbols in the correct positions, the refreshment arrangements calibrated to Veldrathi customs where they were known and to the general standards of distinguished hospitality where they were not.
Gerffron had reviewed the arrangement twice before the carriages arrived.
He had made three adjustments — quietly, with the approval of the head steward, who had looked at the adjustments with the expression of a man encountering suggestions from an unexpected direction and finding them, against his expectation, accurate.
The carriages arrived.
The delegation entered.
Gerffron stood at the entrance of the reception hall and welcomed each member with the specific combination of formality and genuine attention that Harren had briefed, that Corvath had clarified, and that he had arrived at through five years of reading rooms and the two and a half years in a library that had given him nothing but time to understand why people moved through the world the way they did.
He welcomed the administrative delegates with the correct titles and the correct expressions.
He welcomed the judicial correspondence officers with slightly more warmth, because the judicial matters were the ones with the most emotional weight and warmth was the appropriate register for things that had weight.
He welcomed the senior advisory staff with the professional regard of someone acknowledging expertise.
He welcomed the trade delegation members with the specific, practical interest of someone who had been reading trade records and found them genuinely compelling — which was, he suspected, not the expected register for a consort-turned-liaison, which was precisely why it worked.
He welcomed Princess Caelith with the appropriate formal deference and the additional quality of genuine regard for someone he had assessed on the dock and found formidable.
She received all of this with the ease of someone for whom it was her ambient texture.
She also, as she passed, gave him a look that was not part of the formal reception protocol — brief, warm, containing something that was not purely diplomatic.
He filed it.
He directed the delegation toward the prepared rooms and the refreshments that would be waiting there.
The maids received the luggage instructions and distributed accordingly.
He gave the briefing to the two junior liaisons who would be managing the logistics of the delegation's stay.
He confirmed the schedule for the first official session.
He did all of this with the focused, organized efficiency of someone who had spent three days preparing for exactly this and was executing the preparation correctly.
He was, he thought, handling it.
He turned to assess whether the hall had been properly cleared.
He walked directly into Styrmir's chest.
It was not a small collision.
Styrmir was — he was solid in the specific, comprehensive way of someone whose body had finally received what it needed and had built itself accordingly. Gerffron's nose connected with the general area of his collarbone with a muffled sound that was significantly more undignified than any of the formal welcomes he had just completed.
He stepped back.
He pressed his fingers to his nose.
He looked at Styrmir.
Styrmir looked back at him with the specific expression of someone trying very hard not to smile and succeeding only in the technical sense.
"Your nose," Styrmir said.
"I know where my nose is," Gerffron said.
"It just met my collarbone."
"I am aware of what just happened."
"Are you all right?"
"I am fine. It was a minor collision. It happens." He dropped his hand. He looked at Styrmir with as much dignity as was available after walking face-first into someone. "The hall has been cleared. Your accommodation is prepared. A refreshment tray should be arriving within the quarter-hour."
"I know," Styrmir said.
"Is there something you—"
"Where are you staying?"
Gerffron blinked.
"The delegation members have been assigned palace accommodation for the duration—"
"Where are you staying?" Styrmir said again. His voice was even, pleasant, the voice of a man asking a straightforward question that was also, somehow, not entirely a straightforward question.
"I," Gerffron said, "am staying at my house."
"Which is?"
"The Wadee duchy. In the capital. Forty minutes from the palace." He looked at him. "It is my house. I live there. I am staying there because it is where I live."
Styrmir was quiet for a moment.
"Could you not," he said, "stay at the palace? For the duration of the delegation's visit? Given that your role requires—"
"My role requires me to be available during the official hours of the delegation's schedule," Gerffron said. "Which are daytime hours. I will be at the palace for those hours. In the evenings, I will return to my house."
"I would find it more convenient if—"
"What you find convenient is not a factor in the palace accommodation protocol," Gerffron said pleasantly.
Styrmir looked at him.
"I have to go home," Gerffron said.
"Why?"
"Because I have a—" Gerffron stopped. He thought about Oswin, who at two years old was in the care of Wren and the household staff and was entirely fine by any objective measure, and who had nothing in particular to do with Gerffron being in the palace versus the estate, and who was therefore not actually a reason for Gerffron to go home.
He thought about Styrmir standing in a palace room forty minutes from the Wadee estate.
He thought about the carriage and the pink ears and the specific, weighted quality of it's good to see you.
He thought: I need to go home.
"I have a newborn to look after," he said.
Styrmir's expression did something.
It did several things in very quick succession — a sequence of internal events moving through his face that was too rapid for Gerffron to fully catalogue before it resolved into something that was very still.
"A newborn," Styrmir said slowly, trying to digest the words.
"Yes."
"You have a newborn?"
"Yes. At home. I need to — yes."
Styrmir was very still.
"Oh," he said.
His voice had changed.
Not dramatically — not the dramatic change of someone openly processing something in public. The small, internal change of someone who has received information and is deciding what it means and is doing the deciding entirely inside themselves with a composure that was, Gerffron had to acknowledge, excellent.
"Then of course," Styrmir said stiffly. "You should go home to your newborn."
"Yes," Gerffron said.
"I understand completely."
"Good. The morning session begins at the second bell. I will—"
"I'll see myself to my room," Styrmir said.
"The junior liaison can—"
"I'm fine," Styrmir said.
He walked away down the palace corridor with the specific, measured pace of a man who is walking normally and is not, in any visible sense, affected by a piece of news he has just received, which was itself communicating something to anyone paying close enough attention.
Gerffron watched him go.
He thought: I should have clarified that the newborn is not my biological child. The newborn is Wren's son, whom I have been informally caring for, is two years old, and has been calling me the grown-up version of his own made-up word for more than five months.
He thought: I should have clarified immediately. Why didn't I clarify immediately?
He thought about the carriage.
He thought about the ring on his finger and Styrmir's jaw and the slow smile and the winter-pale eyes.
He thought: I panicked. This is deeply professionally inconvenient.
He looked at the corridor where Styrmir had disappeared.
He thought: I will clarify tomorrow.
He went home.